ERIC Number: EJ766679
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007
Pages: 12
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0022-2194
EISSN: N/A
Expressive Writing Difficulties in Children Described as Exhibiting ADHD Symptoms
Re, Anna Maria; Pedron, Martina; Cornoldi, Cesare
Journal of Learning Disabilities, v40 n3 p244-255 May-Jun 2007
Three groups of children of different ages who were considered by their teachers as showing symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and matched controls were tested in a series of expressive writing tasks, derived from a standardized writing test. In the first study, 24 sixth- and seventh-grade children with ADHD symptoms wrote a description of an image. The ADHD group's expressive writing was worse than that of the control group and associated with a higher number of errors, mainly concerning accents and geminates. The second study showed the generality of the effect by testing younger groups of children with ADHD symptoms and controls with another description task where a verbal description was substituted for the picture stimulus. The third study extended the previous observations with another type of writing task, the request of writing a narrative text. In all the three studies, children with ADHD symptoms scored lower than controls on four qualitative parameters (adequacy, structure, grammar, and lexicon), produced shorter texts, and made more errors. These studies show that children with ADHD symptoms have school difficulties also in writing--both in spelling and expression--and that these difficulties are extended to different tasks and ages.
Descriptors: Writing Difficulties, Writing Tests, Hyperactivity, Expressive Language, Control Groups, Attention Deficit Disorders, Writing Skills, Grade 6, Grade 7, Comparative Analysis, Age Differences, Scores, Symptoms (Individual Disorders)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Grade 6; Grade 7
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A